Let Us Talk of Many Thing: The collected speeches by William F Buckley Jr

Author:William F Buckley Jr. [Buckley, William F Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

My next proposition (2) is that The intellectual inferiority of the defenders of capitalism is less critical a factor in contemporary circumstances than the moral inferiority of capitalists.

Hayek has complained about the “inferior caliber” of those intellectuals who incline in favor of the free market, by comparison with those who defend socialism. He is right, though less so by far than when he wrote those dismaying words, before the great intellectual offensive of the past twenty years, for which he is so substantially responsible. Professor Galbraith, giving an interview recently to a London journalist, said that he was forced to admit that, whereas fifteen years ago he and his colleagues were pretty well convinced that there were no serious problems left unanswered in economics, he now recognizes how much there is left to discover.

If there is so much left for you to discover, a fortiori we can imagine how much there is left for Professor Galbraith to discover. One wishes, discreetly, that, as one experiences one’s ignorance, pari passu one would lower one’s voice. But to be apodictic is of course a necessary part of Professor Galbraith’s style. I was recently with him in Switzerland attempting, at lunch, to find a common blank in our calendars, in order to schedule a network exchange in New York for which we had contracted. I proposed to him the first week in April, but he replied, studying his engagement book, that that would not do: in the first week in April he would be lecturing at the University of Moscow. “Oh?” I said. “What do you have left to teach them?” So long as Mr. Galbraith continues to teach economics to the Soviet Union, we will have a market for our excess grain. His contribution to the Ever Normal Granary.

For all his tergiversations, Mr. Galbraith has never wavered on one inclination and that is his contempt for American capitalists—I speak, here and below, of the class, not of individuals. I fear that in this matter uniquely he is correct. He chronicles not only the cupidity but also the parasitic habits of so many of them, the predatory character of their belief in the marketplace. I hope to be understood as saying something more interesting than that greed is the root of many evils, a bipartisan conclusion about human nature. Although Adam Smith did not use the word to describe the instinct of industrial man to improve his lot, he was sardonically aware of the factor of inordinate self-interest, and of the sublimated variations one could play on it. “I see,” he wrote in his journal, “that the Pennsylvania Quakers have freed their slaves. We may deduce that they were few in number.”

Recently, addressing the AFL-CIO in Washington, Solzhenitsyn proclaimed the natural alliance of the American worker and the Russian worker. But, he added, there is “another alliance: the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists.” He went on to discuss a recent exhibit in the Soviet Union of U.S. anti-criminal technology that engrossed the Russians, who instantly put in orders for the lot, cash on the barrelhead.

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